Approach

As I did a year ago, I pulled the data from Deadline.com’s Broadcast series ranker and
cleaned it up. I took out every live and reality TV shows as the
archival value of such show is limited since they are primarily
marketed as “events” and, as such, loose most of their value to
the viewer after the initial broadcast.

Where part of one of the seasons was available, I gave the
service a partial availability. Where seasons prior to the
2010–2011 years were available, I did not give credit if the
2010–2011 season had no availability because I was focusing the
effort on availability of last year’s shows.

From a service standpoint, I focused on services that allowed for
streaming to most internet-enabled television. This meant that
Netflix and Hulu were the main subscription based offerings and
Amazon on-demand and iTunes were listed as pay-per-view services.

The list

With­out fur­ther ado, here’s the list of top 2011 TV shows
avail­able for stream­ing on the internet:

Rank

Name

Netflix

Hulu

Amazon

iTunes

1

NCIS

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

2

NCIS: LA

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

3

The Mentalist

No

No

No

No

4

Criminal Minds

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

5

CSI

No

No

Yes

Yes

6

The Big Bang Theory

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

7

Body of Proof

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

8

The Good Wife

No

No

Yes

Yes

9

Two and a Half Men

No

No

Yes

Yes

10

Blue Bloods

No

No

Yes

Yes

11

CSI: Miami

No

No

Yes

Yes

12

Hawaii Five-0

No

No

Yes

Yes

13

Modern Family

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

14

Desperate Housewives

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

15

Harry’s Law

No

No

No

No

16

Bones

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

17

Castle

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

18

Grey’s Anatomy

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

19

Mike & Molly

No

No

Yes

No

20

CSI: NY

No

No

Yes

Yes

21

$#* My Dad Says

No

No

No

No

22

The Defenders

Yes

No

No

No

23

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior

Yes

No

No

Yes

24

House

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

25

Glee

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

26

Rules of Engagement

No

No

Yes

Yes

27

Law and Order: SVU

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

28

How I met your mother

Partial

Partial

Yes

Yes

29

Brothers and Sisters

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

30

Breaking In

No

No

Yes

Yes

31

The Middle

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

32

Medium

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

33

Office

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

34

Private Practice

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

35

Law and Order: LA

No

No

No

No

36

Family Guy

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

37

Human Target

No

No

Yes

Yes

38

Detroit 1–8-7

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

39

The Chicago Code

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

40

Flashpoint

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

41

Cougar Town

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

42

Mr. Sunshine

No

No

Yes

Yes

43

The Simpsons

No

Partial

Yes

Yes

44

The Event

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

45

V

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

46

Mad Love

No

No

No

No

47

Parenthood

Partial

Yes

Yes

Yes

48

Lie to Me

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

49

Chaos

No

No

Yes

Yes

50

No Ordinary Family

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

While it is fun to check if your favorite show is available or
not, the real interesting trending data only comes when you
re-group the information. For this purpose, I looked at two
different sets of data: first, I looked at whether all the
episodes of the 2010–2011 season were available for a given
series. Then I re-ran my research, giving full credit to the
service for having “some” episodes from that season.

The results were as follows:

Netflix

Hulu

Amazon

iTunes

Some Episodes

18

25

43

43

Partial Offering as Percentage

36%

50%

86%

86%

Complete Series

9

18

43

43

Complete Offering as Percentage

18%

36%

86%

86%

As one would expect, the pay-per-view services are doing better
than the subscription based ones but what is surprising is how
little content is actually available on the subscription-based
services: Hulu only offers some episodes of half of the most
popular shows, while Netflix barely has any offerings, clocking
in with just above a third of the shows having some kind of
stream.

When trying to access full seasons, the data is even worse, as
Netflix offers full seasons on only 9 (or 18%) of the top 50
shows, while Hulu gives you access to the 2010–2011 season for 18
shows (or 36%). The amusing thing is that Hulu appears to give
you access to as many full seasons as Netflix has as partial
ones. The data shows that if you want access to popular TV shows
via subscription, you’re better off going with Hulu than you are
going with Netflix.

What seems to be hurting those services is the fact that CBS, one
of the large TV networks has decided to go it alone when it comes
to their own shows and show them on their own sites instead of
making them available to stream aggregators.

Another interesting thing is that Netflix seems to pick up
cancelled shows more readily than any other service. In my
research, I found that if a show had been cancelled over the last
year, it was more likely to be available on Netflix than on any
of the other services.

On the pay-per-view side, Amazon and iTunes have now reached
parity, as both service offer 43 (or 86%) of the shows on either
per-episode or per-season fees. Their pricing seems to be roughly
the same, with shows average between $.99 and $3.99 per episodes
and full TV seasons passes going for $20.99 to $40.99. I would
not be surprised if next year, we saw those services having the
full set of shows available for instant streaming.

Breaking it down

Looking at the distribution, one might wonder how each of the
services fares on sub-sets of the overall group. Furthermore, in
terms of getting a better sense of trends, if is useful to
overlay this with last year’s data and see whether progress has
been made:

Complete offering

Netflix

Hulu

Amazon

iTunes

2010

2011

Change

2010

2011

Change

2010

2011

Change

2010

2011

Change

Top 10

0

0

Same

2

1

–1

6

9

+3

8

9

+1

Top 25

1

2

+1

6

8

+2

14

20

+6

21

20

–1

Top 50

2

9

+7

12

18

+6

28

43

+15

39

43

+4

Overall, it looks like top 10 shows are less available
onall-you-can-eat subscription-based services this year
than they were last year, while there is an increase in
availability on pay-per-view services.

Netflix continues to trail other services in terms of making full
seasons available and it seems it is a gap that will not narrow
any time soon as Hulu, Amazon, and iTunes continue to
aggressively grow their catalogs. In fact, the big story in this
graph may be the big push Amazon is making in adding new titles
to its streaming library. It has now matched Apple’s iTunes store
in terms of offering, closing the gap it had last year.

When looking at partial availability, we are still seeing some
differences:

Partial offering

Netflix

Hulu

Amazon

iTunes

2010

2011

Change

2010

2011

Change

2010

2011

Change

2010

2011

Change

Top 10

2

0

–2

2

5

+3

3

9

+6

8

9

+1

Top 25

5

6

+1

10

12

+2

14

20

+6

21

20

–1

Top 50

10

18

+8

18

25

+7

31

43

+12

41

43

+2

Here, Netflix appears to have actually list some ground when it
comes to the top 10 list, while all the other players have made
substantial progress. This may point to another weakness for
Netflix moving forward. Also of note is that while Apple used to
be the go-to source for all TV series, Amazon has closed the gap
in the last year, establishing itself as a strong second player
in the market.

Conclusion

Many people look to online TV streams as the key to increasing
the number of people cutting the cord from their cable companies
and moving to internet-only offerings. This year’s data seems to
indicate that it is now possible to do so but that the costs
associated with such a strategy may not necessarily represent a
huge saving for people who consume a lot of TV content.

The greatest amount of available content in terms of legal online
streams can be found on pay-per-view services and
subscription-based services like Netflix and Hulu still have some
ways to go before providing a TV-like selection (this may explain
why both of them are starting to turn further in the
direction of producing their own content). However, viewers
who watch only a few select show may be able to get this content
from services like Amazon and Apple iTunes for a fee.

People watching this space should pay closer attention to
Amazon’s aggressive push in this arena. As the company continues
to expand its digital offerings, it seems to have earmarked video
as one of the areas in which it is willing to go big and it has
quietly grown its catalog over the last year.